1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a data recording/reproduction apparatus comprising an image pickup section and a built-in camera and adapted to record and reproduce data of the picked up image and also to a data recording/reproduction method.
2. Related Background Art
The video data of the images picked up by an image pickup apparatus such as a video tape recorder having a built-in camera and stored in a recording medium such as a video tape often represent consecutive cuts (pictures taken consecutively or the data of the cuts), each of which is relatively short. Then, the user may need to make efforts for detecting and retrieving a desired cut when he or she wants to confirm the contents of some or all of the cuts and/or edit them.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 7-154731 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 7-154740 disclose a technique for quickly detecting, retrieving and editing such video data. With the disclosed technique, index information is generated when the picked up video and/or audio data are recorded on a recording and stored in a separate recording medium or in a region directly extending from the recording region of the original data of the same recording medium. Then, in the video tape recording apparatus having a built-in camera that is adapted to operate with this technique, the index information is referred to when the recorded data are retrieved and reproduced, if partly.
However, conventional video tape recorders having a built-in camera are adapted only to display index information in the form of a list of numerical data including the time and date when each of the cuts is picked up and so on. Some users claim that such display of numerical data is not particularly friendly to the user.